Schlock Treatment
Destroy All Humans!THQ, PS2, XBox
In 1950s science fiction films, extraterrestrials were generally portrayed as either bug-eyed menaces or interstellar peaceniks. Destroy All Humans! is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to these B movies of yore, crammed with references to Ed Wood’s famously bad Plan 9 From Outer Space and an appropriately Theremin-heavy soundtrack. And, as the exclamatory title suggests, your goal is not to save Earth but to crush it beneath your alien boot heel.
You play Crypto-147, a bubbleheaded alien clone sent to Earth to spring your comrade in galactic domination from the clutches of army scientists. While other games might be tempted to turn Crypto’s quest into a heartwarming tale of misunderstood outsiders fighting against bigoted humans, Destroy All Humans! feels no need to play the sympathy card. Using a variety of space-age weapons and psychic abilities, he zaps and then sucks the delicious brains from farmers, soldiers and pretty much any other “filthy ape” that gets in his way. He has definitely not come in peace.
Destroy All Humans! isn’t a grim exercise in wholesale human slaughter, however. Megalomaniacal though he may be, Crypto’s pretty much the sci-fi equivalent of a ugly American tourist abroad—almost everything he does, from mistaking cows for Earth’s dominant species to demolishing Washington, D.C., is played for comic relief. Even his feasting on the brain stems of citizens (a necessity to replenish vital energy lost when attacked) is less gross than goofy. Thanks to a clever script and humorous doses of cartoonish violence, Destroy zaps new life into an old formula. Call it Grand Theft Auto: Area 51.
